Plan your career in music

Do you have a plan for your music career?

By June Golobic, International touring rock guitarist and master teacher

What do you plan or wish to happen for your music career? Do you even have music career goals that are specific and written down? Are you taking the right steps to make those goals come true? Do you even know the right steps you need to take? I believe that reading this article will help you get few new puzzles of your music career in the right place and get your music career going.

If you get the opportunity for your band that you’ve been really waiting for are you really able to except it today? A lot of us musicians dream about getting signed by huge record labels, going on a world tour, making records. But are you really ready to do this, are you ready to take that offer? To clarify what I mean, here’s a short conversation between our manager and my fellow band members that went on just few days ago. As I’m writing this we’re recording our first album.
Manager: ‘Guys I talk to the XY guy at the XY record label. I told him about the band and the record and so on.’

Band: ‘Oh how cool. So what did he say?’
Manager: ‘Well the first thing he asked me was: ‘Is this a pro or a hobby band? Can they go on tour and play 100 gigs per year?’
Band: ‘…….’
Manager: ‘So guys what should i tell him when I speak to him again? Are you able to go on tour for months where you’ll get just enough money to survive on tour, can you pay your bills at home, without having your day job?’
Band: ‘….. hmm…’

I won’t say I’m lucky that I got the chance to say ‘yes’, but I will say that I’ve been doing everything I could for the past few years to be able to say “yes” when this kind of situation come. So how was I able to say yes?

I was writing about the goals setting in the beginning. Well, my goal as a teenager was: I want to become a pro guitarist and I don’t ever want to work in a day job. I’m well passed that goal now. So my goal for the past few years was: I want to be able to establish my business that would support me and could run without me while I’m on tour or recording a record or whatever. I wanted to give myself a chance to decide based on what I want, not what I need or have to or must do. So if you want to go on tour with your band you need to expect that in the beginning you will probably lose money on tour. There are of course a lot of ways how you can make additional money while on tour but this would be beyond the scope of this article.

This means that if you want to survive, pay bills and have a flexible working environment (you don’t want to be looking for a new job every few months because you’re on tour and you’re broke when you come home), you need to have an additional cash flow that works for you while your away.
How can you do that? There are a lot of ways you can do that. One of the ways that I’ve decided to take was to build a guitar teaching business that would help me earn the money I need for the records, promotion and everything that goes in investing in one’s music career, plus something that would give me money and financial support while I’ll be on a tour.
See you on the road!
Written by: Jure Golobicwww.ucenje-kitare.com